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LEPSIUSHAUS REMEMBERS ITS NAMESAKE
By Muriel Mirak-Weissbach
http://www.mirrorspectator.com/2012/11/08/lepsiushaus-remembers-its-namesake/
November 8, 2012 1:19 pm
Special to the Mirror-Spectator
POTSDAM, Germany - In Potsdam, not far from Berlin, there is a
beautifully renovated villa known as the Lepsiushaus, or House
of Lepsius, which was the family home where the German pastor and
humanitarian aid worker, Dr. Johannes Lepsius, lived and worked from
1908 to 1926. Since its official opening as a museum and research
center in May 2011, the Lepsiushaus has become the venue for exhibits,
lectures and conferences related to the theme of the 1915 Armenian
Genocide.
Most recently, the Lepsiushaus hosted an international conference
honoring its namesake. The September conference gathered experts
from several universities in Germany, Switzerland, US and Armenia,
including Prof. Ashot Hayruni of Yerevan State University, and Prof.
Margaret L. Anderson of the University of California, Berkeley,
who shed light on the many sides of this complex and controversial
individual.
Lepsius is known to most Armenians as a courageous German who
intervened in an effort to halt the Genocide being perpetrated by the
Young Turk government in Turkey. He travelled to Turkey to set up his
humanitarian mission in Urfa in 1896 to aid victims of the Hamidian
massacres, and after hearing reports through the foreign ministry in
Berlin of new massacres in 1915,
again traveled to aid Armenians. He set off for Constantinople hoping
to mount a humanitarian aid initiative to save Armenians, but was
prevented from travelling inland by the Young Turk officials. In
a famous personal encounter with War Minister Enver Pasha, which
Franz Werfel immortalized in his saga, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh,
Lepsius confronted Enver with the Young Turks' political and moral
responsibility and pleaded with him to be able to intervene to help
the Armenian population. Enver refused. The only thing that Lepsius
could do was to interview Armenian refugees arriving in the capital,
along with foreign missionaries and other eye-witnesses to the mass
murders, in order to compile a report based on the testimonies that
would document the tragedy being perpetrated. That report was to
shake Germany and the world.
As Dr. Rolf Hosfeld, director of the Lepsiushaus, recalled in his
keynote speech to the conference, that report titled, "The Situation
of the Armenian People in Turkey" and published secretly in Potsdam in
1916, made history, and not only in Germany. In Lepsius's own country,
the privately printed report was sent out in 20,000 copies to officials
of the Protestant church, other selected personalities and the editors
of the major press. The report was soon confiscated and banned by
the German authorities - Germany being allied to the Young Turk
government - and Lepsius had to flee to Holland, where he continued
his campaign to inform world public opinion of what was happening in
Turkey. In America, where the drama of the Armenians had been followed
closely, Lepsius's account was reported in the New York Tribune in
July 1919. "That the most significant charge against such crimes
committed by a state should indeed come from a German...," Hosfeld
noted, "must have surprised the reader of the New York Tribune."
In fact, it is precisely this fact that led Hosfeld to characterize
Lepsius as "a German exception," the title of the conference. Not only
did he openly criticize the policy of an ally of his nation in WWI, but
he identified that Young Turk policy as part of "an internal political
program" aiming at the "elimination of the Armenian element of the
population" and rejected any notion that it had to do with military
measures related to Turkey's defense. Lepsius, as Hosfeld stressed,
"saw his work from the onset as explicitly political" even back in the
1890s. And he had to pay a price for it. When his Protestant church
superiors denied him free time for his pro-Armenian activities, he
decided to resign and to work independently. Lepsius collab- orated
with the German foreign office on a reform plan in 1913 to protect
the Armenian minority, but the outbreak of war rendered it a dead
letter. When news of the new massacres reached Germany, he left for
Turkey, where he tried unsuc- cessfully to save the Armenians.
What he did man- age to do with his documentation to inform German
and world public opinion was, however, of historic importance. Lepsius
was not and is not just a hero. As Hosfeld indicated in his speech and
other con- ference speakers detailed, he was a creature of his time.
Though firmly opposed to the Young Turks' genocide policy on religious,
political and humanitarian grounds, Lepsius "had diffi- culties in
fully admitting a qualified co-respon- sibility of the German Empire
on this first great European mass murder, even though he spoke in
1919 of genocide," said Hosfeld.
By Muriel Mirak-Weissbach
http://www.mirrorspectator.com/2012/11/08/lepsiushaus-remembers-its-namesake/
November 8, 2012 1:19 pm
Special to the Mirror-Spectator
POTSDAM, Germany - In Potsdam, not far from Berlin, there is a
beautifully renovated villa known as the Lepsiushaus, or House
of Lepsius, which was the family home where the German pastor and
humanitarian aid worker, Dr. Johannes Lepsius, lived and worked from
1908 to 1926. Since its official opening as a museum and research
center in May 2011, the Lepsiushaus has become the venue for exhibits,
lectures and conferences related to the theme of the 1915 Armenian
Genocide.
Most recently, the Lepsiushaus hosted an international conference
honoring its namesake. The September conference gathered experts
from several universities in Germany, Switzerland, US and Armenia,
including Prof. Ashot Hayruni of Yerevan State University, and Prof.
Margaret L. Anderson of the University of California, Berkeley,
who shed light on the many sides of this complex and controversial
individual.
Lepsius is known to most Armenians as a courageous German who
intervened in an effort to halt the Genocide being perpetrated by the
Young Turk government in Turkey. He travelled to Turkey to set up his
humanitarian mission in Urfa in 1896 to aid victims of the Hamidian
massacres, and after hearing reports through the foreign ministry in
Berlin of new massacres in 1915,
again traveled to aid Armenians. He set off for Constantinople hoping
to mount a humanitarian aid initiative to save Armenians, but was
prevented from travelling inland by the Young Turk officials. In
a famous personal encounter with War Minister Enver Pasha, which
Franz Werfel immortalized in his saga, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh,
Lepsius confronted Enver with the Young Turks' political and moral
responsibility and pleaded with him to be able to intervene to help
the Armenian population. Enver refused. The only thing that Lepsius
could do was to interview Armenian refugees arriving in the capital,
along with foreign missionaries and other eye-witnesses to the mass
murders, in order to compile a report based on the testimonies that
would document the tragedy being perpetrated. That report was to
shake Germany and the world.
As Dr. Rolf Hosfeld, director of the Lepsiushaus, recalled in his
keynote speech to the conference, that report titled, "The Situation
of the Armenian People in Turkey" and published secretly in Potsdam in
1916, made history, and not only in Germany. In Lepsius's own country,
the privately printed report was sent out in 20,000 copies to officials
of the Protestant church, other selected personalities and the editors
of the major press. The report was soon confiscated and banned by
the German authorities - Germany being allied to the Young Turk
government - and Lepsius had to flee to Holland, where he continued
his campaign to inform world public opinion of what was happening in
Turkey. In America, where the drama of the Armenians had been followed
closely, Lepsius's account was reported in the New York Tribune in
July 1919. "That the most significant charge against such crimes
committed by a state should indeed come from a German...," Hosfeld
noted, "must have surprised the reader of the New York Tribune."
In fact, it is precisely this fact that led Hosfeld to characterize
Lepsius as "a German exception," the title of the conference. Not only
did he openly criticize the policy of an ally of his nation in WWI, but
he identified that Young Turk policy as part of "an internal political
program" aiming at the "elimination of the Armenian element of the
population" and rejected any notion that it had to do with military
measures related to Turkey's defense. Lepsius, as Hosfeld stressed,
"saw his work from the onset as explicitly political" even back in the
1890s. And he had to pay a price for it. When his Protestant church
superiors denied him free time for his pro-Armenian activities, he
decided to resign and to work independently. Lepsius collab- orated
with the German foreign office on a reform plan in 1913 to protect
the Armenian minority, but the outbreak of war rendered it a dead
letter. When news of the new massacres reached Germany, he left for
Turkey, where he tried unsuc- cessfully to save the Armenians.
What he did man- age to do with his documentation to inform German
and world public opinion was, however, of historic importance. Lepsius
was not and is not just a hero. As Hosfeld indicated in his speech and
other con- ference speakers detailed, he was a creature of his time.
Though firmly opposed to the Young Turks' genocide policy on religious,
political and humanitarian grounds, Lepsius "had diffi- culties in
fully admitting a qualified co-respon- sibility of the German Empire
on this first great European mass murder, even though he spoke in
1919 of genocide," said Hosfeld.